Best signing

Sebastian Giovinco. Any player who finally tipped Toronto into a playoff spot was always going to be celebrated, but the fact that he sealed the deal by doing this should tell you everything about the season enjoyed by the Italian:

Giovinco’s combined 38 goals and assists were remarkable enough, but he’s almost as interesting as a potential archetype – a designated player drawn to MLS in the prime of his career. There’s no doubt Giovinco represents the breed of player MLS wants to target for the next wave of its expansion. This year gave them their poster child for that movement.

Best comeback

Let’s give this one to FC Dallas, in their conference semi-final against Seattle. The Sounders had looked dead on their feet for much of the second leg in Dallas, as an effervescent Dallas team chased the equalizer that would take them through on away goals. But having finally forced the breakthrough late one, Dallas conceded themselves in the last minute to put Seattle in pole position. But Oscar Pareja’s young team would not be denied – Walker Zimmerman’s header deep into stoppage time took the game to extra time, then the same player put away the winning penalty and gave us his best Blue Steel as a bonus.

Most unfortunate reference to an energy drink

At the beginning of the year, with the Red Bulls fans still mutinous over the sacking of Mike Petke, his replacement Jesse Marsch outlined his vision for the team:

“To get quickly and briefly into the playing style, this is an energy drink … a more dynamic and up-tempo game.”

For long-time fans, for whom the Red Bull ownership have been barely tolerated, referencing the corporate overlords as your tactical and stylistic cue was, well, like a red rag to a bull. At a subsequent town hall meeting that will live in infamy, Marsch and sporting director Ali Curtis were heckled about the decisions made at the club, at which point Marsch acknowledged that his analogy might have been unfortunate.

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But by the end of the year, with the Red Bulls indeed playing not only an up-tempo pressing game, but a successful one, that led them to the Supporters’ Shield, Marsch could have been forgiven for digging up the energy drink example again. Though had he done so, he might have risked a few fans pointing out that the fizz went flat in the Eastern Conference final.

Best tantrum

There was only really one contender for this. At the start of the year Seattle were rolling over everybody. Obafemi Martins and Clint Dempsey were reprising their 2014 roles as the most feared attacking tandem in the league and back-to-back Supporters Shields and – whisper it – an MLS Cup didn’t look like outlandish possibilities. And in June they had the chance to start their defense of their beloved US Open Cup by playing rivals Portland Timbers at Starfire Stadium where they’d never lost.

Two hours later, seven Sounders players limped off the field after a 3-1 defeat that had also seen them lose Martins to injury for weeks, and three players to varying suspension for the red cards they’d received.

One of them went to Clint Dempsey, forripping up the referee’s notebook. Which ought to do it. With his subsequent suspension, departure for the Gold Cup, and injury problems of his own, Dempsey joined Martins on the long term absentee list. Seattle’s season never recovered its early momentum – and Portland won the MLS Cup.

Most distended expansion: Miami

The sprawling Art Basel took place last week, occupying numerous venues across the city. And given Beckham United’s struggles to find a stadium site to finally make the former England captain’s MLS franchise option a reality, it was surprising they didn’t try to occupy one of those venues as a “time-based mixed media stadium installation (with parking)”. As it was, with time running out before an MLS governors’ meeting during MLS Cup weekend, the Beckham team announced a private deal to build a stadium in what is now their fourth possible site.

Is the matter finally solved? Possibly, though the stories emerging from Miami have suggested that Beckham and co didn’t quite appreciate that when it comes to difficult local politics, Miami could teach New York a thing or two. And with franchises comfortably commanding $100m fees at the moment, it’s not as if the MLS governors are overly-incentivized about the idea of Beckham pushing his agreed cut price option through.

Best Little Englander: Frank Lampard/Steven Gerrard

Lampard’s determined bid to retain his crown from last year just edged out Steven Gerrard’s alarming discovery that America is big, has multiple climates, and other players. Gerrard started brightly on his debut at the StubHub Center, but for him, as for many of his new Galaxy team mates, the problems were on the road and he ended the season lamenting the disparate playing conditions of his new job.

LA never looked like imposing themselves away from home, and by the final day in Kansas City, they’d left themselves with too much to do to grab an automatic semi-final berth. Gerrard’s season ended in a knockout game in Seattle and he was left with plenty of time to contemplate his new reality in the long MLS off-season. Could have saved some time by asking Robbie Keane, mind you.

But Lampard’s long-delayed arrival into an NYC FC team who’d just begun to show signs of fight and organization, sees him take repeat honors this year. As promising midfielders like Poku and Tommy McNamara were relegated to supporting members, Lampard and Andrea Pirlo were dropped into midfield, with predictable results for the team’s mobility. Lampard, in particular, began to settle later in the season, but by then Jason Kreis’s fate as head coach was settled, too. No word from City Football group on what Lampard and Pirlo’s end-of-season report said, but Kreis’s was enough to see him out the door.

Best set piece defender

Speaking of New York City FC, this rather summed up Andrea Pirlo’s general confusion about what he was doing at Yankee Stadium each week:

Pirlo defends a corner

Most surprising result

Orlando had their share in a couple of these – beating MLS Cup finalists Columbus Crew 5-2 in August, then going to Red Bull Arena and doing the same to the Supporters Shield-bound Red Bulls. Their particular brand of inconsistency meant that when they were good, especially going forward on the counter, they were very good, and when they were bad they were horrid. An injury-ravaged team missed the playoffs, but they should be stronger again next season.

But perhaps the big surprise was the late-season 5-2 result Portland secured at Stubhub Center, after trailing midway through the second half. It was the moment where it all came together for the Timbers, and the moment where, just as in 2013, the Galaxy fans were hit with the realization that, no, the team wasn’t stumbling into the playoffs where they’d go on a run, but stumbling into the playoffs where they’d soon be stumbling out.

Portland meanwhile, had spent the year being good in parts, without ever quite adding up to a complete team, but with Darlington Nagbe’s shift to the center, and Diego Chara’s lone defensive midfielder role defined, they suddenly found form. The Galaxy result had been brewing, but for it to come in LA, at that stage of the season, and in such runaway fashion, was the surprise of the year.

Most beloved executive

We could make a case for the Red Bulls’ Ali Curtis, who so angered the fans with his Mike Petke firing that an electronic billboard protest was organized at the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel, but he looks positively bush league when compared to Philadelphia Union’s Nick Sakiewicz.

There isn’t space to fully enumerate the ways Sakiewicz managed to alienate the fanbase in Philly, but perhaps the fact that the Sons of Ben paraded a coffin emblazoned with the phrase “serial franchise killer” before one game this year, should tell you something about where his reputation had plummeted to. The club finally parted ways with him in the fall.

Most MLS deal

Lest year it was Jermaine Jones, but perhaps this year’s award should go to the collective bargaining agreement, which briefly threatened to be a crisis, but wasn’t really. The players and league settled with five days to go before the season started, with the main breakthrough for the players being a modest form of free agency for players over the age of 55, who’d been with the same team since before the team’s expansion fee check cleared (or something). The negotiated version of the deal was actually marginally more generous than the original suggestion proposed by the league, which as it turns out would have created exactly one free agent – Houston’s Brad Davis.

The deal raised the salary cap for some of the lowest paid players in particular, so was positive in that regard, but the emphasis on financial prudence and tight salary caps increasingly looks like coming into conflict with the league’s ambitions to be a top ten league by 2022.

Best little wizard

Giovinco. And Mauro Diaz. Dallas are getting stronger and stronger year on year, and that should frighten a lot of opponents watching their fast and organized young side mature. Fabian Castillo drew a lot of the focus, but Diaz is a special playmaker and deserves a nod.

Most masochistic reaction to defeat

As the final whistle went in MLS Cup, a distraught Kei Kamara sank to the ground and stayed there. And stayed there.

The podium for the winners was erected; Portland players invented complicated celebratory dance moves, and went up for their trophy; Kamara stayed sitting.

His team mates hurried off the field heads bowed; Crew fans serenaded their 26-goal man with his name; Kamara stayed sitting.

“I’m going to get up now. Definitely. Just one more firework … Is Caleb Porter kissing the trophy? Can’t miss that.” Photograph: Jay LaPrete/AP

He’d missed out in Sporting KC’s 2013 triumph by a couple of months after leaving for Middlesbrough. Now back in Columbus, where it all started for him, he’d finished a free-scoring season with another goal in the final, but had again missed out on the Cup.

And now, as he explained afterwards, he was hanging around because: “To me, it’s not just about getting up and walking away. It’s about seeing the other guys and how they feel, what that celebration is like. Because you want to feel that. That’s the feeling I was just soaking in.”

It didn’t look much fun, though.

Biggest goalkeeping howler

Every year we vote for the save of the year on the league’s official site, via a complicated bracket that takes roughly seven and a half months to resolve. It’s really dull and usually an exercise in ballot-stuffing. (Here’s the one that should have won, by the way).

Much more important is the biggest howler, and obviously those made on the biggest stage are all the more significant.

There could be only one winner. Twenty-seven seconds into MLS Cup, Steve Clark of Columbus Crew SC did this.

We’re going to be charitable and claim he had half an eye behind him in case Didier Drogba appeared and did this again.

2013 MLS Cup final award for epic penalty shootouts

Portland Timbers vs Sporting Kansas City in Western Conference knockout round. This was just silly.

The faster! Faster! award for services to the attention deficit highlight industry

Best goal

Giovinco’s effort at the top of the page took Toronto to their first ever playoff spot and was the cap on an extraordinary season.

Team of the year

Portland Timbers – not just for winning MLS Cup but for their depth across the board. When it came to the playoffs it was always a question of whether the frontrunners would stay healthy and how much it would matter if their first choice players didn’t. The Red Bulls suffered for the loss of Damien Perrinelle; Crew SC saw a Kei Kamara more or less contained in the final after the knock he picked up in the final training session hindered him; Dallas were undone less by lack of depth than lack of game management when it mattered.

But Portland, who’d been good in parts all year, got it right when it mattered – and when they swapped players in or moved them around, there was no discernible drop in quality. We can argue the merits of the team throughout the season, but best roster? Definitely.

Coach of the year

Jesse Marsch. As one heckler put it at the town hall meeting: “You’ve got a year!” A spirited Marsch replied: “I’ll take it!” He won the Shield and took his team to within a post’s width of extra time in the Conference final. And he did it with the most exciting Red Bulls team in years (the bits between Thierry Henry highlights were not always fun.)

New York City FC coach of the year

Jason Kreis. It wasn’t a stellar debut year on the field for NYC FC, but there were many mitigating circumstances – none of which Kreis used as excuses. He deserved better. Over to you, Patrick Vieira.